Our collection of British watercolours, British drawings and British oil paintings for sale

Mark Mitchell Paintings has a substantial holding of British paintings for sale. These range from a technically skilful and beautifully-composed gamepiece by the Scottish artist, William Gowe Ferguson (1632-95), to contemporary works by living artists, such as Stephen Rose, Terry Watts, and Vanessa Garwood. This is inevitably a broad category; it includes landscapes, still life, figure paintings, nudes, seascapes, &c; it also covers work in a range of media – oils, watercolours, drawings, paintings in coloured chalks, and acrylics.

Although the 16th century was a period when much of the better art seemed to have been executed by immigrant artists, giving the impression of a dearth of talent in Britain itself, the country had had a thriving tradition of indigenous art from an early period. During the Roman occupancy, frescoes were painted in public and private buildings, and under Anglo-Saxon rule the country was famous for the quality of its illuminated manuscripts. The updating of churches from Saxon to Norman, and the later Reformation, are responsible for the loss of many mediaeval British paintings, resulting in this apparent dearth.

From the 17th century, native artists became important again, both in oils and watercolours (botanical drawings were an important category of the latter medium). With the growth of the picturesque, landscape painting became particularly important, and artists such as Girtin and Turner invested watercolour landscapes with a sublimity which lifted their status almost to the level of oil paintings. Watercolour painting has remained important to the British, and to contemporary artists such as Edward Wesson and George Weissbort. Mark also holds a wide range of British oil paintings for sale, similarly including still life, landscapes and figure paintings. Denys Wells (1881-9173), for example, is interesting for his work recording the bomb-damaged landscapes of London between and after the two World Wars; his still life paintings are complex colour harmonies influenced by the Bloomsbury group.